In a frenzied effort to get more Europeans vaccinated, the EU spent an estimated €21.5bn (£17.9bn) on an exclusive deal with Pfizer for up to 1.8bn doses. The deal was secured by Von der Leyen after her text offensive, as she later told the New York Times in a flattering interview.

As an investigative reporter, I filed an access request under the EU’s freedom of information law to the messages shared between von der Leyen and Bourla. These messages, if we had them, might provide important insights into how the controversial life-saving vaccines deal came together. They might also help to answer questions such as why the EU became Pfizer’s single biggest customer but reportedly paid a much steeper price for this batch of vaccines compared with the first tranche of Covid shots it had bought.

There is a bigger principle at stake here, too: EU citizens have a right to know what was being negotiated on their behalf during a public health emergency. Did the contract involve too many doses of the vaccine bought at a fixed price, with no scope for a review as the pandemic developed?

But the commission refused the request to share the messages, claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law. The commission’s secrecy around its communications is so fiercely guarded that it is now defending its refusal to make the texts available in the EU court.

As things stand, any potentially controversial exchanges between EU officials and outside interests, including corporate lobbyists and authoritarian governments, can simply be moved to text or WhatsApp to dodge public scrutiny.